Phoney war ends as Euro-election campaign hots up

With just over three weeks to go until polling day in the European Parliament elections, Europe’s political parties have weighed in, taken their gloves off and started slugging it out for the hearts and minds of the Union’s 370 million voters.

Although campaigning does not officially begin until the end of the month in countries such as France, Portugal and the Netherlands, Europe's political groups have been engaged in a phoney war since the start of the year.

Parties have been drawing up campaign strategies, putting the finishing touches to joint manifestos and rallying the party faithful at congresses across the continent for some months now.

But things only really began to heat up at the assembly's last plenary session earlier this month. Political point scoring was back on the agenda after a long absence and the usually placid Parliament was treated to the spectacle of MEPs trading insults on the chamber floor and parties trumpeting their successes of the last five years.

On 7 May, parliamentarians cleared their desks and returned to their home countries to start campaigning.

More than a half of the present batch will not return to the glittering new assembly building in Strasbourg in July. But for those bidding for re-election and the hundreds of wannabe MEPs, the month between Parliament's shut-down and polling day will be the busiest and most nerve-wracking of their political lives.

Although the differences between the groups' political programmes are slight - all want more jobs, less crime, and cleaner institutions and environments - there are striking contrasts in the way they will fight the elections.

The Socialists, Liberals and Greens all plan to run national campaigns rather than pan-European offensives. "The national parties like it when you give them money but not when you stuff messages down their necks," said one official.

The Parliament's largest political group, the 214-strong Socialists, view the European elections as very much an extension of national politics. There will therefore be no centrally organised campaign and no star-studded rallies in the Union's capital cities. In fact, the only commitment Europe's 11 Socialist leaders have signed up to is to campaign in at least two member states other than their own in the run up to the 10-13 June poll.

"Europe as an ideal does not figure in the campaign," said Dutch Socialist candidate Michiel van Hulten.

Nor does the party intend to focus on issues such as EU reform much loved by Brussels policy experts. "People are positive about Europe but negative about the institutions," says Van Hulten. "If you start talking about institutions, people switch off. The only thing you can do is to talk about things that affect them."

The Liberals kicked off their campaign at a congress in Berlin at the end of April. In contrast to their Socialist rivals, they aim to make political capital out of the institutional crisis which led to the downfall of the European Commission. The assembly's third largest group won plaudits for pushing the EU executive to the edge of the precipice earlier this year and plans to campaign under the slogan: "Liberal Democrats make the difference."

Unlike the other major political parties, the Christian Democrats - who are tipped to emerge as the assembly's leading force in June - are running a transnational campaign based on the goal of building a united Europe. "This campaign is for the European Parliament - it is not 15 national trials-of-strength in disguise," said European People's Party (EPP) Secretary-General Alejandro Agag.

With only a handful of prime ministers in its ranks, the EPP is having to pool its leaders and draw on political stars from sister parties in central and eastern Europe to do its campaigning.

On 9 May, EPP President Wilfried Martens launched the party's manifesto at a 'political fiesta' in Madrid. Last week, Spanish premier Jose Maria Aznar joined Irish opposition leader John Bruton for Guinness and Celtic music at the launch of the party's campaign in Dublin, and at the end of the month, Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene will jet down to rally French conservatives in Toulouse.